GPT-3: Its Nature, Scope, Limits, and Consequences
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GPT‑3: Its Nature, Scope, Limits, and Consequences Luciano Floridi1,2 · Massimo Chiriatti3
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract In this commentary, we discuss the nature of reversible and irreversible questions, that is, questions that may enable one to identify the nature of the source of their answers. We then introduce GPT-3, a third-generation, autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like texts, and use the previous distinction to analyse it. We expand the analysis to present three tests based on mathematical, semantic (that is, the Turing Test), and ethical questions and show that GPT-3 is not designed to pass any of them. This is a reminder that GPT-3 does not do what it is not supposed to do, and that any interpretation of GPT-3 as the beginning of the emergence of a general form of artificial intelligence is merely uninformed science fiction. We conclude by outlining some of the significant consequences of the industrialisation of automatic and cheap production of good, semantic artefacts. Keywords Automation · Artificial Intelligence · GPT-3 · Irreversibility · Semantics · Turing Test
1 Introduction Who mowed the lawn, Ambrogio (a robotic lawn mower)1 or Alice? We know that the two are different in everything: bodily, “cognitively” (in terms of internal information processes), and “behaviourally” (in terms of external actions). And yet it is impossible to infer, with full certainty, from the mowed lawn who mowed it. Irreversibility and reversibility are not a new idea (Perumalla 2014). They find applications in many fields, especially computing and physics. In 1
This is a real example, see https://www.ambrogiorobot.com/en. Disclosure: LF owns one.
* Luciano Floridi [email protected] 1
Oxford Internet Institute, 1 St Giles’, Oxford OX1 3JS, UK
2
The Alan Turing Institute, British Library, 96 Euston Rd, London NW1 2DB, UK
3
IBM Italia, University Programs Leader - CTO Blockchain & Digital Currencies, Rome, Italy
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L. Floridi, M. Chiriatti
mathematical logic, for example, the NOT gate is reversible (in this case the term used is “invertible), but the exclusive or (XOR) gate is irreversible (not invertible), because one cannot reconstruct its two inputs unambiguously from its single output. This means that, as far as one can tell, the inputs are interchangeable. In philosophy, a very well known, related idea is the identity of indiscernibles, also known as Leibniz’s law: for any x and y, if x and y have all the same properties F, then x is identical to y. To put it more precisely if less legibly: ∀x∀y(∀F(Fx ↔ Fy) → x = y) . This means that if x and y have the same properties then one cannot tell (i.e. reverse) the difference between them, because they are the same. If we put all this together, we can start understanding why the “questions game” can be confusing when it is used to guess the nature or identity of the source of the answers. Suppose we ask a question (process) and receive an answer (output). Can we reconstruct (reverse
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